Buddhist Cold War Brewing Between India and China

China was already irked by the Dalai Lama’s attendance at an international Buddhist conference in Delhi this week and called off a visit of a senior Chinese foreign ministry official to make that clear.

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The Dalai Lama, right, is greeted by a Buddhist monk during the Global Buddhist Congregation in New Delhi Wednesday.

What transpired at the conference is likely to add to Beijing’s annoyance.

The first Global Buddhist Congregation, which concluded Wednesday in New Delhi, with the Dalai Lama in attendance, decided to set up a new international Buddhist organization based in India.

That’s stepping on Beijing’s toes as China, since 2006, has backed the World Buddhist Forum to show it is serious about sponsoring Buddhism. The forum’s meeting in Zhejiang province five years ago was attended by over 1,000 monks.

Of course, the Dalai Lama, regarded as a separatist by Chinese authorities, was not invited to attend that meeting or subsequent events under its umbrella.

The new body will be headquartered in India and attempt to bring together the main schools of Buddhism, said the Delhi-based Asoka Mission, which organized the meeting.

Unlike Catholicism, Buddhism has no organizing center. Most Chinese and North Asians practice the Mahayana school of the faith, while Theravada Buddhism thrives in Southeast Asia. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

China has made other attempts recently to show it is the global leader of Buddhists. This summer, a Hong Kong-based foundation, widely believed to be backed by Beijing, said it planned to invest $3 billion to develop an airport, hotels and a tourist site at the birthplace of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, at Lumbini in Nepal.

Nepal’s government said it had not been consulted and shot down the plan, much to the relief of India, which for years has seen Nepal as within its orbit.

A high-level Chinese delegation visited Lumbini in November, perhaps to show that Beijing is still serious about developing the site.

It appears the race between China and India, as a protector of Tibetan Buddhism, to speak for all Buddhists is picking up pace.

And India’s politicians, as always, are keen to show they won’t follow China’s prescriptions when it comes to hosting the Dalai Lama, who has lived for more than 50 years in India after fleeing China.

Not only did New Delhi ignore China’s protests over the Dalai Lama’s attendance at the conference this week. The local government of Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of India’s state of West Bengal, also ignored a request by the Chinese government asking officials not to attend an event in Kolkata on Thursday at which the Dalai Lama gave an address.

On Saturday, the Tibetan spiritual leader is set to speak at New Delhi’s Habitat Center at an event organized by Penguin Books.

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